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6.9.05

First shovel

When I was eight my parents divorced. This isn't really an anomalous tale in this day and age, I know, but your own story is always the biggest one you know. There's always people who talk about how much damage they've endured over trauma from childhood, but I don't know if I buy all that.

My sister and I remember the night my father left for the last time very differently. I don't know which one of them is more accurate. Memory's a hell of an artist. You give that sod a little time and it paints whatever it wants to. I know my mother took off for a day or so. Didn't come home from her 3 to 11 nursing gig until the next evening. I've never asked where she went. I know when she came home she told my father that he wasn't gonna beat her up anymore. He was gonna leave and stay left. Some argument ensued, not that I was surprised, that was pretty normal for me. Mom was close enough to the butcher's block to get a good sized knife and cut him to punctuate. I imagine after 12 years of him playing the drums on her she had had about all she was gonna.

Well, that must have carried the sentiment effectively because he got the hell out and never did come back. My sister apparently just got back in touch with the old boy after she and I have cut off (sic) contact for 12 years or so. Something to do with some half siblings that I don't really know from his first marriage who are down by/in New Orleans. I hear he's in poor health. I'm not inclined to re spark that relationship, but this wasn't meant to be about me. See my mom went through the worst of it and she came out of it stronger. Her career and her next marriage are strong.

Nietzsche gets credit for the quote about that which doesn't kill you making you stronger, but I go a little past and say it makes you different. Healing is a triumph and scars trophys. That's all it does. I spoke to her tonight and there's nothing in her denoting life as a punishment or a trial. It just is. It isn't good ot bad, it just is. I guess if it's important to you to stay a victim and that works for you, do it. I'm too busy trying to make something out of myself and so's my mother. Maybe it shaped me some as I'm sure it shaped her, but it didn't make us better or worse. Just different.

That is so touching! Yay for your mom. I know what you mean about things changing you. You don't mean to change, but you look at everything differently after someone does you wrong, or something bad happens in your life.